The interesting thing about the scandal surrounding the use of fake photoshopped pictures from the fighting in Lebanon is that it is BIG NEWS everywhere EXCEPT in the Lamestream Media where there is barely a mention of it. On the Web, TECHNORATI shows "Reuters" as the #1 search item, "Lebanon" as #2, and Reuters fake photo photographer, "Adnan Hajj" at #3. So why the disconnect? One might as well ask why newspaper circulation is plummeting or why Network News viewership is steadily declining. In fact, this fake photo story probably wouldn't have even become big news had it not been for the Pajamahadeen on the Web. They, NOT the MSM were the ones who discovered the obviously doctored photos such as the one above with the repeating smoke patterns plus the double image of the same building that you can see highlighted in the animation. So what was the reaction from the Leftist blogosphere? In the case of the Daily Kos, one big yawn with nary a mention. However, in DUmmieland, their reaction is that such doctored photos didn't really matter since they illustrated a "larger truth" or that the fake pics were really part of a dirty Republican trick to discredit the already discredited Leftist media (such as Reuters or AP). Such views on the fake photos out of Lebanon are laughingly on display in this DUmmie THREAD titled, "Reuters admits altering Beirut photo." As usual the DUmmie excuses for photo fakery are in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent assuring every red blooded male out there that all photos featuring the magificent mountains of Playboy Playmate Petra Verkaik are oh so real, is in the [brackets]:

Reuters admits altering Beirut photo

[GASP! And the next thing you know, the Associated Press will admit to writing wildly biased stories.]

Reuters withdraws photograph of Beirut after Air Force attack after US blogs, photographers point out 'blatant evidence of manipulation.' Reuters' head of PR says in response, 'Reuters has suspended photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to photograph.' Photographer who sent altered image is same Reuters photographer behind many of images from Qana, which have also been subject of suspicions for being staged

[Notice that the MSM is NOT mentioned in the exposure of this photo fakery. The MSM reporters are either too busy telling each other how unpopular Bush is or just flat out too lazy to even care about this because it doesn't fit into their leftist agenda.]

How much of what we see/read can we accept unquestionily as fact? From either side or any source? I wonder how often this really happens.

[In almost every AP or MSM story as well as from Reuters. And there are MORE such faked photos.]

Take everything from most media sources with a grain of salt. Especially these days.

[And this DUmmies WINS a salted Kewpie Doll for having a brief moment of mental clarity!]

Have you been listening to Limbaugh? Also note it's too Late they are ALREADY a tool for propaganda and have been lap dogs to this administration... So have you? been listening to Limbaugh? You stated almost verbatim what he did.. These photographers are obviously willing to participate in propaganda,'' Limbaugh said.]

[To question the veracity of the Reuters photos means you are obviously a tool of the rightwing, including Rush Limbaugh.]

Also Hezbollah is into every thing in that country. Their military part is just a part of the group. They build schools, hospitals and homes. I am willing to say they were right there to dig out the people. I do not think this is a group that is just into terrorism.

[The Hezbollah as warm hearted humanitarians argument.]

We deem any group that goes against Halliburton's wishes as terrorists.

[If you oppose Halliburton then you MUST be one of the good guys or so goes the bizarre DUhmmie reasoning.]

So the number of lies told are irrelevant as long as they fit your point of view?

[That pretty much sums up the point of view in DUmmieland, you LOUSY FREEPER TROLL!!!]

Since it is the Ministry of Propoganda saying that it is fake, I will continue to believe in the original photo and the origianl photographer

[I BEEEEEELIEEEEEEEVEEE!!!]

We know the deaths are real but the propaganda will be non-stop since Israel is committing war crimes and their PR teams are working overtime.

[So Israel faked those photos?]

There's a small chance this could be a Memogate type set-up.

[The photos were taken by Lucy Ramirez then faxed to Karl Rove from a Kinko's in Beirut.]

"Memogate" or "Rathergate" smells like it

[Now all we need is the Karl Rove link to make the paranoia complete.]

I was thinking the same exact thing. This type of play worked against Rather, why not obfuscate this situation foo.

[As Dan Rather would say, the Reuters photos were fake but accurate.]

Here's a quote from the article: "Earlier, Charles Johnson, of the Little Green Footballs blog , which has exposed a previous attempt at fraud by a major American news corporation, wrote : "This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop clone tool to add more smoke to the image."

Little Green Footballs? That previous work he's done was against Dan Rather regarding the Killian documents.

[AHA! Well that pretty much proves your paranoid conspiracy theory. Now if we can somehow link Freeper Buckhead to the Reuters photos the paranoid conspiracy theory will be airtight beyond a doubt.]

LGF is a right wing site. Like FR.

[Just like the DUmmie FUnnies.]

that tells me all i need to know

[That's all you need to know to shut down your tiny mind.]

Just as the concept that the bombs in the Shock and Awe campaign were smart bombs led so many AMericans to believe that that campaign had done little to kill hurt or maim Iraqi civilians, now we must believe that the Beirut photos are a lie. Truth is the first casualty of war.

[Yeah, how silly to believe the obviously photoshopped Reuters pictures are fake, even AFTER Reuters admitted the fraud.]

Makes you wonder why someone would deliberately put out an image so obviously manipulated?

[DUhhhhmmmmie!]

Like the "forged document" that documented Duhbya's AWOL escapades, the document's veracity was called into question, but the facts it contained never were. The pre-emptive strike effectively killed the story and made for a great RW echo-chamber talking point. Put up an obviously manipulated photo of the attacks in Lebanon, and the RW Noise Machine can cry "foul!" over and over and over.Meanwhile; the facts remain.

[aka Fake but Accurate.]

The print editor must have been working with eyes closed. For that to reach publication.

[He had the bias blindfold over his eyes.]

Crappy use of the clone stamp...

[Reuters needs to hire fakers with better photoshop skills.]

I could be wrong, HOWEVER, this is like rathergate: the point is not the veracity of this one photo, as it does not excuse the collective punishment being undertaken. IN fact, it feels a bit ROVIAN in scope to me, since it was such an OBVIOUS fakery.

[DING! DING! DING! We have a WINNER here with the first paranoid DUmmie mention of tying Karl Rove into the scandal!]

Why, it's almost like the photographer WANTED to discredit... his own work.

[Why, it's almost like the DUmmies WANTED to discredit themselves with their own lame excuses.]

It's following the same trajectory as Rathergate... Drudge, Malkin have now picked up the story. Let's see if Faux, CNN, then the broadcast stations follow...

[Maybe the photographer can get the same book deal as Mary Mapes.]

I smell a RAT! This is too poorly done for anyone to have seriously...tried to pass it off as "real" (un-retouched). It's just WAY too obvious! That's one of the worst Photoshop jobs I've ever seen! Looks like a "...my first time I ever used Photoshop..." photo. I'm going to wait for the Reuters Investigation, because their is NO WAY any professional photographer would do this to their own photo, and then try to pass it off to a world-wide wire service as un-retouched. My guess is that the Reuters site was HACKED!

[The laughable Reuters as Innocent Victim Argument.]

This is probably a Dan Rather Memogate type set-up. Just like the freepers screamed that the memo was fake and completely ignored the substance of it, they can do the same here and say the photos have been staged.

[A fake memo that was "accurate" in the minds of DUmmies and Dan Rather.]

All of this reminds me of the rapid *debunking* of the Dan Rather AWOL story, by an online GOP political operative in just a few hours after that program aired. Rather's story was factual. But when the operatives began raising so much stink about *the document* Rather cited, the facts of the story were buried from the public. If you fax a copy of the Constitution to someone, the content of the fax is accurate, but the fax paper is obviously altered from the original parchment. But the facts are the same. Very slick sleight of hand by the GOP. Confuse and distort. They are masters of it.

[Yeah, if you fax an original copy of the Constituion, it will end up with proportional spacing and superscripts.]

Now every photo that displeases the Israeli government will of course be "doctored" or claimed to be doctored -- to some, proof enough.

[The Protocols of the Elders of Rove conspiracy theory.]

Little Green Footballs is credited for catching this? Weren't they the ones that "caught" Rather's memogate?

[AHA! Well, that just validates DUmmie paranoia.]

There's a lot of conspiracy theory going on here... but before any of them can be taken seriously, someone is going to have to address the least-complicated scenario, that the photographer is sympathetic to Hezbollah, that he therefore has a vested interest in making the Israeli attacks seem as devastating as possible, and exaggerated the image for the consumption of sympathetic international media. That we are all horrified by civilian deaths is the exact reason Hezbollah aims to cause them by siting their launch pads and arsenals next to schools and hospitals. At what point are we encouraging such behavior by reacting to incidents such as Qana by putting additional pressure on Israel?

Really not much for me to add to your commentary, PJ. Once again, we see the DUmmies slicing their own throats with Occam's Razor -- ignoring the truth and the simplest explanation in favor of a laughably complicated theory about a "setup" or "conspiracy".

To them, it's never about truth or lies, it is always about what they wish to believe and what will back up their pre-determined opinions.

Why, it's almost like the photographer WANTED to discredit... his own work.

To be fair, that was raised as a possibility both here and on LGF that night. The theory was that Reuters instructed the photographer to "pep it up" or lose his job for insubordination, and he, being a man of principle, decided to give himself a voice in the resulting investigation.

The revelation that at least three more of his photos are obvious Photoshop fakes as well (never mind Qana) put the lie to that theory of course.

14
posted on 08/07/2006 8:03:53 AM PDT
by jiggyboy
(Ten per cent of poll respondents are either lying or insane)

Have you been listening to Limbaugh? Also note it's too Late they are ALREADY a tool for propaganda and have been lap dogs to this administration... So have you? been listening to Limbaugh? You stated almost verbatim what he did.. These photographers are obviously willing to participate in propaganda,'' Limbaugh said.]

Has Rush said anything about these photos? This happened over the week end, so I don't think Rush has had a chance to say anything yet.

17
posted on 08/07/2006 8:10:30 AM PDT
by jellybean
(Proud to be an Ann-droid and a Steyn-aholic)

Yesterday, a professional photojourno I know tried weakly to make a case that Reuters was "sandbagged". He is a classical liberal who is on our side more than that of the left and is mostly pro national defense, having served in VN. But photojournalism is his life, not just his profession. Since the wire services are the root of "the news", to distrust them is to distrust everything. I can tell this is an existential moment for him and it must be for many others, as well. He also is just totally confused by the one-sided reporting on this war. He really expected the majority of the media to be pro-Israel.

While this will further accelerate the demise of the MSM, where are we going to get the truth from half a world away? Hajj has also done work for AP. All the wire services employ local stringers. Personally, I want factual information. Where are we going to get this? More importantly, since FReepers have many non-MSM sources, where are the majority of people in the West going to get factual information? How do we maintain an open democratic society when no official sources of information can be trusted?

However, in DUmmieland, their reaction is that such doctored photos didn't really matter since they illustrated a "larger truth" or that the fake pics were really part of a dirty Republican trick to discredit the already discredited Leftist media (such as Reuters or AP).

28
posted on 08/07/2006 8:31:01 AM PDT
by weegee
(Remember "Remember the Maine"? Well in the current war "Remember the Baby Milk Factory")

Also Hezbollah is into every thing in that country. Their military part is just a part of the group. They build schools, hospitals and homes. I am willing to say they were right there to dig out the people. I do not think this is a group that is just into terrorism.

[The Hezbollah as warm hearted humanitarians argument.]

The Nazis had socialist programs for the "proper" German people. Drug lords in South America buy off the locals too.

Doesn't correct the horrible wrongs they do. It's like the defense attorney talking about a criminal's charitable works.

We deem any group that goes against Halliburton's wishes as terrorists.

[If you oppose Halliburton then you MUST be one of the good guys or so goes the bizarre DUhmmie reasoning.]

The shocking double standard is that the left cannot admit to a single good work ever by Halliburton but CAN point to good things done by Hezbollah, Nazis, and Communists.

36
posted on 08/07/2006 8:44:28 AM PDT
by weegee
(Remember "Remember the Maine"? Well in the current war "Remember the Baby Milk Factory")

Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.

41
posted on 08/07/2006 8:48:58 AM PDT
by weegee
(Remember "Remember the Maine"? Well in the current war "Remember the Baby Milk Factory")

"The photos were doctored not by some political agenda, but for one simple reason: sensationalism sells."....

"Finally someone gets to the root.....of the matter. It [doctoring of the photos] was driven by sensationalism. That in turn is driven by greed which is a cornerstone of, and virtue within, conservative philosophy."End of cited material.

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